Group launches Comcast service-call remix contest

A public interest group trying to block Comcast’s $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable wants to hear the best remix, mashup or jingle of subscribers’ disastrous service calls with the cable giant.

Public Knowledge is offering to pay one month’s cable bill to the winner of a contest it launched on Tuesday to highlight the company’s reputation for bad service.

{mosads}“We at Public Knowledge are working hard to prevent that merger from happening,” it said in a blog post explaining the competition. 

“But for now, why not turn these calls (and any others that surface) into something more? We challenge YOU to remix Comcast’s repeated examples of poor customer treatment into something unique and creative.”

The public interest group wants people to take one of the recent phone calls with a Comcast representative that have gone viral online and “let your imagination go to work.”

“We want to see remixes, mashups, autotunes, interpretive dances — whatever you think of to broadcast these real customer service calls with Comcast,” it said.

The contest comes after a popular eight-minute recording from earlier this summer, in which AOL employee Ryan Block tried to cancel his Comcast service but was denied by a company employee at every turn. 

“You don’t want a good service? You don’t want something that works?” the Comcast employee said during the call.

The recording caught fire online and epitomized many subscribers’ frustrations with customer service at the country’s largest cable company. Since then, recordings of similarly miserable experiences have surfaced online.

Comcast is currently trying to win the support of regulators at the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) who are reviewing its merger with Time Warner Cable, the nation’s No. 2 cable provider.

Public Knowledge, which told the FCC this week that it should block the deal, said that the company’s treatment of its subscribers would only get worse if the merger is allowed.

“This combined company will have even less incentive to treat their customers better, especially when those customers have few alternatives to turn to,” it said.

The deadline for the contest is Sept. 18.